Peter Andrew Jones
Encyclopedia
Peter Andrew Jones is a British artist and illustrator perhaps best known for his many fantasy and science fiction genre illustrations. During a career of over 30 years he has worked on book jacket covers, film posters, advertising, and games, and set up and ran his own company, Solar Wind, later transforming it into a Science Fiction & Fantasy
brand, alongside several other specific genre-based brands, such as Rural Dreams, his rural wildlife and landscape art. He now lives in rural Shropshire, England, where he manages his business self-publishing hand-made books, cards and prints, and continuing to work on original art, including science fiction and fantasy illustration, wildlife art inspired by his immediate surroundings, and private commissions.
Galleries at around the age of twelve further fixed his interest in a future career in the field.
With the encouragement of his art tutor, Jones attended St. Martin's School of Art
in London in 1970, where he studied graphic design, graduating in 1974. At the college, a visiting lecturer suggested Jones combine his interest in realism with imaginative skills, drawing Jones into the Fantasy and Science Fiction fields. Whilst at St. Martins Jones took the decision to "become an illustrator". Within a month he was producing his first commercial work for Puffin Books
, the cover for Penelope Farmer
's A Castle of Bone.
, Ray Bradbury
, Arthur C. Clarke
, Greg Bear
, Larry Niven
, Philip K. Dick
, Marion Zimmer Bradley
and Harry Harrison
. An anthology of Jones' work was published under the title Peter Jones: Solar Wind by Paper Tiger
in 1980, covering his science fiction and fantasy illustrations over the last decade.
He has also produced images for film publicity, creating the movie posters for The Sword and The Sorceror and Alligator, contributed during the early 1980s to television shows including BBC comedy The Two Ronnies Show and the BBC's '80s sci-fi adaptation of The Tripods, and has produced cover illustrations for video game publishers such as US Gold, Psygnosis and Virgin Interactive
.
Jones is well-known for his work for the Fighting Fantasy
gamebooks originated by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone
in the 1980s, particularly for having provided the original cover for the first title in the series in 1982. To the distress of the book's publishers, Jones' illustration for the cover of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was designed with space for the title in the center of the frame, eschewing the publishing tradition of placing titles at the top of the page, something he did after being asked to do 'something revolutionary', and was inspired by his observations of the layouts of many American romance titles at the time. He provided several further pieces for the Puffin FF series, including covers for Starship Traveller, Talisman of Death, and The Riddling Reaver, as well as over twenty cover illustrations for Joe Dever
's Lone Wolf
gamebooks and a number of covers for Mark Smith
and Jamie Thomson's Falcon series.
Also during this time, a number of Jones' fantasy images appeared on the covers of Games Workshop
's White Dwarf
magazine. From covers for the magazine, Jones went on to produce game art for GW's boardgame adaptation of the first Fighting Fantasy title The Warlock of Firetop Mountain; cover art for GW's edition of Chaosium
's Stormbringer RPG
followed. The processes involved in Jones' production of the cover for Stormbringer were detailed in an Illuminations exposè in White Dwarf issue 90.
During the 1990s Jones further pursued his interest in aviation-related art, becoming involved with the RAF Benevolent Fund, and a number of World War II pilots. His illustrations of aircraft and aerial combat can be found in a variety of books on the subject, and his work in the field has been commended by pilots, including one-time World War II pilot George H. W. Bush
.
During the early 1980s Jones set up his own design studio and licensing company, 'Solar Wind Ltd', based in Wimbledon, London, to facilitate his ongoing illustration work and manage the licensing of his images. Solar Wind was closed down in the late 1990s, when he decided to develop the name for a wider remit, bringing together work in various fields. Solar Wind was transferred to Shropshire with Jones, from where he now operates the company in partnership with licensing provider MGI. Jones' current work includes ongoing genre and wildlife illustration, the production of hand-made and self-published books, cards and prints, and occasional private commissions. He has also self-published further collections of his work, including Heroes and Villains, Affetti, Rural Dreams, Solar Wind: No Known Substance and an illustrated dark fantasy novel called Crux Millennium.
, DC's Superman
and Batman
comics, and television programmes like Thunderbirds
, Doctor Who
and Star Trek
. Later on he was exposed to the rash of alternative cultural phenomena of the decade, discovering underground artists like Robert Crumb
, Mick English and Martin Sharp
, and Pop art such as that of Peter Blake
and David Hockney
. Salvador Dalí
, who he considered 'science fantasy', was also a guiding influence during his early years. Whilst at college, Jones was introduced to American artists and illustrators like Norman Rockwell
, Andrew Wyeth
and James Bama
, frequent illustrator of the Doc Savage
books. Bama in particular made a lasting impact, particularly his Western genre art, and Jones still considers him both a genius and the single most major influence on his work.
Jones' science fiction and fantasy work tends to be predominated by images featuring central characters against the backdrop of other-worldly landscapes.
Jones works primarily in hand-mixed oil paint, although he has long made a habit of using a diverse range of mixed media in a single piece, including mixed applications of oils and acrylics, the effect produced being of greater concern than the potential longevity of the piece. In recent years he has also adopted the use of a Macintosh computer and drawing tablet. Jones' hand-made prints, sold via his website and certain stockists, are sometimes detailed with gold and rare pigments such as lapis lazuli.
Cover illustrations such as that for the Stormbringer RPG are executed in alternating layers of oil and acrylic colour, including the use of an airbrush, on an emulsion-primed hardboard support, in the case of Stormbringer, lightly dusted with plaster whilst wet and sealed with an oil wash. Said White Dwarf's art editor John Blanche
of Jones' take on Elric, "Peter's strong design sense and dramatic choice of colours have combined to produce the definitive image of Elric, as the battle-crazed albino, dominated by his demon sword, Stormbringer. . ."
brand, alongside several other specific genre-based brands, such as Rural Dreams, his rural wildlife and landscape art. He now lives in rural Shropshire, England, where he manages his business self-publishing hand-made books, cards and prints, and continuing to work on original art, including science fiction and fantasy illustration, wildlife art inspired by his immediate surroundings, and private commissions.
Early life
Peter Andrew Jones was born in 1951 in Islington, London, the son of Reginald and Catherine Jones, his father an engineer. Showing interest in the visual arts from an early age, he describes the London of his boyhood as 'noisy and grey' with little for children to do, and took to painting to fill time and "colour his world". He also began to develop a life-long love of aviation and space technology encouraged by commercial Airfix kits and drawing fighter aircraft at RAF Leuchers in Scotland. At school he continued to pursue his interest in art, and won numerous school prizes for his work. A trip with his parents to London's National and TateTate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
Galleries at around the age of twelve further fixed his interest in a future career in the field.
With the encouragement of his art tutor, Jones attended St. Martin's School of Art
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. The school has an outstanding international reputation, and is considered one of the world's leading art and design institutions...
in London in 1970, where he studied graphic design, graduating in 1974. At the college, a visiting lecturer suggested Jones combine his interest in realism with imaginative skills, drawing Jones into the Fantasy and Science Fiction fields. Whilst at St. Martins Jones took the decision to "become an illustrator". Within a month he was producing his first commercial work for Puffin Books
Puffin Books
Puffin Books is the children's imprint of British publishers Penguin Books. Since the 1960s it has been the largest publisher of children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world.-Early history:...
, the cover for Penelope Farmer
Penelope Farmer
-Life:She was born as a fraternal twin in Westerham, Kent, on 14 June 1939 to Hugh Robert MacDonald and Penelope Boothby Farmer. After attending a boarding school, she read history at St Anne's College, Oxford and did postgraduate work at Bedford College, University of London.Information about...
's A Castle of Bone.
Career
So commenced a decade of producing cover art for science fiction and fantasy publications. During his career he has provided book covers for a slew of prolific science fiction and fantasy authors including Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
, Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
, Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
, Greg Bear
Greg Bear
Gregory Dale Bear is an American science fiction and mainstream author. His work has covered themes of galactic conflict , artificial universes , consciousness and cultural practices , and accelerated evolution...
, Larry Niven
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
, Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Many critics have noted a feminist perspective in her writing. Her first child, David R...
and Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison is an American science fiction author best known for his character the Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! , the basis for the film Soylent Green...
. An anthology of Jones' work was published under the title Peter Jones: Solar Wind by Paper Tiger
Paper Tiger Books
Paper Tiger is a publishing house started in 1976 by Martyn and Roger Dean, on the back of their success at publishing Dean's Views graphic album under sister imprint Dragon's Dream...
in 1980, covering his science fiction and fantasy illustrations over the last decade.
He has also produced images for film publicity, creating the movie posters for The Sword and The Sorceror and Alligator, contributed during the early 1980s to television shows including BBC comedy The Two Ronnies Show and the BBC's '80s sci-fi adaptation of The Tripods, and has produced cover illustrations for video game publishers such as US Gold, Psygnosis and Virgin Interactive
Virgin Interactive
Virgin Interactive was a British video game publisher. It was formed as Virgin Games Ltd. in 1981. The company became much larger after purchasing the budget label, Mastertronic in 1987. It was part of the Virgin Group...
.
Jones is well-known for his work for the Fighting Fantasy
Fighting Fantasy
Fighting Fantasy is a series of single-player fantasy roleplay gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volumes in the series were published by Puffin in 1982, with the rights to the franchise eventually being purchased by Wizard Books in 2002...
gamebooks originated by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone
Ian Livingstone
Ian Livingstone OBE is an English fantasy author and entrepreneur. He is a co-writer of the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and co-founder of Games Workshop....
in the 1980s, particularly for having provided the original cover for the first title in the series in 1982. To the distress of the book's publishers, Jones' illustration for the cover of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was designed with space for the title in the center of the frame, eschewing the publishing tradition of placing titles at the top of the page, something he did after being asked to do 'something revolutionary', and was inspired by his observations of the layouts of many American romance titles at the time. He provided several further pieces for the Puffin FF series, including covers for Starship Traveller, Talisman of Death, and The Riddling Reaver, as well as over twenty cover illustrations for Joe Dever
Joe Dever
Joe Dever is an award-winning British fantasy author and game designer. Originally a musician, Dever became the first British winner of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Championship of America in 1982....
's Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf (gamebooks)
Lone Wolf is a series of 28 gamebooks, created by Joe Dever and initially illustrated by Gary Chalk. The series began publishing in July 1984 and sold more than 10.2 million copies worldwide....
gamebooks and a number of covers for Mark Smith
Mark Smith (author)
Mark Smith is the author of several fantasy gamebooks, including co-authoring two Fighting Fantasy titles , and the series Duelmaster, Falcon and Way of the Tiger, all of which he co-authored with Jamie Thomson, whom he met whilst at school in Brighton. He also wrote two of the Virtual Reality series...
and Jamie Thomson's Falcon series.
Also during this time, a number of Jones' fantasy images appeared on the covers of Games Workshop
Games Workshop
Games Workshop Group plc is a British game production and retailing company. Games Workshop has published the tabletop wargames Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000...
's White Dwarf
White Dwarf (magazine)
White Dwarf is a magazine published by British games manufacturer Games Workshop. Initially covering a wide variety of fantasy and science-fiction role-playing and board games, particularly the role playing games Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest and Traveller...
magazine. From covers for the magazine, Jones went on to produce game art for GW's boardgame adaptation of the first Fighting Fantasy title The Warlock of Firetop Mountain; cover art for GW's edition of Chaosium
Chaosium
Chaosium is one of the longer lived publishers of role-playing games still in existence. Founded by Greg Stafford, its first game was actually a wargame, White Bear and Red Moon, which later mutated into Dragon Pass and its sequel, Nomad Gods...
's Stormbringer RPG
Stormbringer (role-playing game)
The Stormbringer fantasy role-playing game published by Chaosium puts the players in the world of the Young Kingdoms, based on the Elric of Melniboné books by Michael Moorcock. The game takes its name from Elric’s sword, Stormbringer...
followed. The processes involved in Jones' production of the cover for Stormbringer were detailed in an Illuminations exposè in White Dwarf issue 90.
During the 1990s Jones further pursued his interest in aviation-related art, becoming involved with the RAF Benevolent Fund, and a number of World War II pilots. His illustrations of aircraft and aerial combat can be found in a variety of books on the subject, and his work in the field has been commended by pilots, including one-time World War II pilot George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
.
During the early 1980s Jones set up his own design studio and licensing company, 'Solar Wind Ltd', based in Wimbledon, London, to facilitate his ongoing illustration work and manage the licensing of his images. Solar Wind was closed down in the late 1990s, when he decided to develop the name for a wider remit, bringing together work in various fields. Solar Wind was transferred to Shropshire with Jones, from where he now operates the company in partnership with licensing provider MGI. Jones' current work includes ongoing genre and wildlife illustration, the production of hand-made and self-published books, cards and prints, and occasional private commissions. He has also self-published further collections of his work, including Heroes and Villains, Affetti, Rural Dreams, Solar Wind: No Known Substance and an illustrated dark fantasy novel called Crux Millennium.
Style and technique
As a child Jones enjoyed the formative influence of popular media during the 1960s, including The Eagle's Dan DareDan Dare
Dan Dare is a British science fiction comic hero, created by illustrator Frank Hampson who also wrote the first stories, that is, the Venus and Red Moon stories, and a complete storyline for Operation Saturn...
, DC's Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
and Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
comics, and television programmes like Thunderbirds
Thunderbirds (TV series)
Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s science fiction television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation"...
, Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
and Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
. Later on he was exposed to the rash of alternative cultural phenomena of the decade, discovering underground artists like Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
, Mick English and Martin Sharp
Martin Sharp
Martin Sharp is an Australian artist, underground cartoonist, songwriter and film-maker. Sharp has made contributions to Australian and international culture since the early 60s, and is hailed as Australia's foremost pop artist...
, and Pop art such as that of Peter Blake
Peter Blake (artist)
Sir Peter Thomas Blake, KBE, CBE, RDI, RA is an English pop artist, best known for his design of the sleeve for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He lives in Chiswick, London, UK.-Career:...
and David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
. Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, who he considered 'science fantasy', was also a guiding influence during his early years. Whilst at college, Jones was introduced to American artists and illustrators like Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
Norman Percevel Rockwell was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening...
, Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century....
and James Bama
James Bama
James Bama is an American artist known for his realistic paintings and etchings of Western subjects. Life in Wyoming led to his comment, "Here an artist can trace the beginnings of Western history, see the first buildings, the oldest wagons, saddles and guns, and be up close to the remnants of...
, frequent illustrator of the Doc Savage
Doc Savage
Doc Savage is a fictional character originally published in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L...
books. Bama in particular made a lasting impact, particularly his Western genre art, and Jones still considers him both a genius and the single most major influence on his work.
Jones' science fiction and fantasy work tends to be predominated by images featuring central characters against the backdrop of other-worldly landscapes.
Jones works primarily in hand-mixed oil paint, although he has long made a habit of using a diverse range of mixed media in a single piece, including mixed applications of oils and acrylics, the effect produced being of greater concern than the potential longevity of the piece. In recent years he has also adopted the use of a Macintosh computer and drawing tablet. Jones' hand-made prints, sold via his website and certain stockists, are sometimes detailed with gold and rare pigments such as lapis lazuli.
Cover illustrations such as that for the Stormbringer RPG are executed in alternating layers of oil and acrylic colour, including the use of an airbrush, on an emulsion-primed hardboard support, in the case of Stormbringer, lightly dusted with plaster whilst wet and sealed with an oil wash. Said White Dwarf's art editor John Blanche
John Blanche
John Blanche is a British fantasy and science fiction illustrator and modeler known for his work for Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazine, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Warhammer 40,000 games and his role as art director for the company, including his work in the field...
of Jones' take on Elric, "Peter's strong design sense and dramatic choice of colours have combined to produce the definitive image of Elric, as the battle-crazed albino, dominated by his demon sword, Stormbringer. . ."
External links
- Peter Andrew Jones official website
- A page on Jones at Abandonart
- A page on Jones at Sci-fi-o-rama
- A collection of Jones' images at Scanraptor
- A page on Jones' Fighting Fantasy contributions at Gamebooks.org
- A bibliography of Fighting Fantasy work on Titannica gaming wiki
- A partial list of Jones' gaming credits on pen-paper.net